Surround problems with cs46xx

[Vasilis Manwlopoulos <vmanolop@gmail.com>]

Hi,


Sorry for bothering the list again, but I have major problems with the 
surround 5.1 sound. I have manually compiled/installed th latest 
alsa-1.0.14 drivers but nothing improved. I am using Ubuntu 7.04 and my 
soundcard is  the Hercules Fortissimo III. This is, as far as I know by 
reading on Internet, supported by the module snd-cs46xx in ALSA. I have 
enabled the surround sound by creating the following .asoundrc file.

pcm.!default {
    type plug
    slave.pcm "surround51"
    slave.channels 6
    route_policy duplicate
}


The problem is that sound pauses whenever I try to do something "heavy" 
such as opening a new firefox window or generally another app. Also, 
there are delays and echo between the front and the rear speakers from 
time to time. I think that the problem is that, this alsa setup(meaning 
surround5.1 and the specific soundcard) places a heavy load on the cpu. 
There are 99% cpu usage times when the only thing active is a player 
playing a "normal bitrate" mp3. When I delete the .asoundrc file and I 
switch to default stereo sound using only the 2 front speakers the 
problems disappear.

Can anyone suggest anything about this?


Thanks in Advance
V.Manolopoulos